"An Arkansas man has been convicted of malicious wounding for beating a black man during a white nationalist rally last year in Charlottesville, Va.
Jacob Scott Goodwin, 23, will be sentenced in August. The jury is recommending 10 years in prison and a $20,000 fine, local TV station NBC 29 reports."
I mean, Iām pleased by this, but in a sense I shouldnāt be
Iām pleased by this because this happening isnāt normal, so when justice actually occurs I get pleased.
Justice being served should be the default.
While Iām 100% in favor of punching Nazis, I am also deeply into the public humiliation of them and their fellow-travelers.
I spent the whole video wondering if the sign was made of coroplast.
That is in downtown Seattle. Also:
It gets better:
https://twitter.com/keirsmith/status/992264984863301632?s=21
Sartre on Nazis:
Same for ironic sexists and ironic anything else-ists. Much younger Scott was often guilty of some āget back in the kitchenā jokes. Even though I was honestly joking, I donāt make those ājokesā anymore, and Iāll dispense shame on anyone who does.
A while back, there was a talk at, I think, at DEFcon linked around here about elevators and how theyāre actually just unsecured staircases and should never be considered a way of preventing anyone from getting anywhere.
Anyway Iāve been following the speakers of those talks for years now and they attended HOPE con, and I kinda watched as this nonsense was live tweeted. This is boing boingās article about postmortem that one of the organizers made.
The thing that strikes me is that the nazis are largely indistinguishable from the westboro baptist church, in this instance. They provoke others to break the rules while not technically breaking the rules themselves. The postmortem contains some ideas about how to address this. All in all worth a read. Especially if you organize or volunteer at any event where you can, even in a small way, influence the CoC or how itās enforced.
Itās trivial to deal with. Con rules just state that anyone can be removed for any reason at any time (even with a refund to make things simpler), and you just start removing the people who are obviously causing the problem.
Itās only ever not trivial if your own staff are sympathetic to the nazis.
From what I gather, (and I could be wrong, I defer to experts like you) in HOPEcon and many other consā cases, con rules donāt state that at all. Instead they have specific things that you can be removed for and the nazis donāt do any of those things.
If trivial to deal with, then this should be thought of as a, if youāre a con, update your CoC to include a, we can throw anyone out for any reason clause.
These are in all cases poorly organized cons. Real cons will also kick people out who āgameā the system.
So what do you suggest? Close down the cons?
If a con canāt put together a policy that lets them kick out trolls and nazis, that con doesnāt deserve to continue existing.
When a con has a strict and prescriptive āCode of Conductā and enforces it to the letter, in almost all cases that conās staff are using this as an excuse to let the bad actors stay on purpose.
I donāt think thatās the case here (though again maybe Iām just wrong). I think they just never had their rules tested in this manner. The post mortem even includes (paraphrasing) āThese rules were modeled to deal with a drunk attendee gropes a speaker and another drunk one starts yelling racial slurs, they werenāt designed to resist an outright targeted infiltration attackā
My impression is that the con 1 part blindsided and 1 part too slow to change with the times, I just think this should serve as a wake up call to other events.
At least I hope so. If youāre right and HOPEcon and other similar events are secretly evil thenā¦ well fuck.
Bullshit. They can kick people out regardless of their rules. Itās a private event.
They chose not to.
The moment a con hides behind ātheyāre not technically violating our rulesā that con is a garbage con.
I think senior staff are a combination of evil and cowards.
The rest is pure incompetence. I mean, even at a con like ConnectiCon I would have easily been able to direct some staff to deal with a situation like this.
So, only question, Did you read the postmortem or are you just going by my little write-up? I did miss some nuance. But I do think Iāve slightly shifted my perspective. I was perhaps biased because some people I liked and respected were going to this con.
